Body Size Anxiety: Appearance Management Behaviors, Social Physique Anxiety, Appearance Evaluation, and Appearance Orientation in Larger Size Women

Weight bias is a pervasive form of discrimination in our modern day society. Goffman (1963) offered foresight into why weight bias has become so prevalent in our modern era. Those with stigmatized identities which people perceive as controllable are seen as having a defect in their own character. This makes sympathy for the individual less likely than criticism

Neutrophil characterization for the development of novel combination therapy in a murine model of influenza pneumonia with secondary pneumococcal coinfection

Pneumococcal coinfection is a critical complication of influenza pneumonia and has played a vital role in the lethal synergism seen in influenza pandemics throughout the last century. This project focuses on identifying novel combination therapy which targets the excessive innate immune response in addition to the pathogens involved to improve clinical outcome. In order to develop this therapy model, a consistent and appropriate murine model for dual infection is established and the availability of chemokine receptors as potential targets is evaluated. Finally, a CXCR2 antagonist, Sch527123, is tested in combination therapy in this model and shows promise when used in combination and when administered near the start of clinical disease. This research provides the foundation for the exciting potential of innate immune targets to treat pneumococcal coinfection in pandemics

Getting the Most Out of Giving: Concretely Framing a Prosocial Goal Maximizes Happiness

Across six field and laboratory experiments, participants assigned a more concretely-framed prosocial goal (e.g., making someone smile or increasing recycling) felt happier and reported creating greater personal happiness after performing a goal-directed act of kindness than did those who were assigned a functionally similar, but more abstractly-framed, prosocial goal (e.g., making someone happy or saving the environment). Moreover, mediation analyses revealed that this effect was driven by differences in the size of the gap between participants' expectations and reality. Compared to those who pursued an abstractly-framed prosocial goal, those who pursued a concretely-framed goal perceived that the actual outcome of their goal-directed efforts more accurately matched their expectations, causing them to experience a greater boost in happiness. Evidence that participants are unable to predict this effect, believing that pursuing abstractly-framed prosocial goals would have either an equal or greater positive impact on their own happiness, is also presented

Triggering Clothes?: Fashion and the Pro-Anorexia Community.

Pro-anorexia is a subculture of anorexia nervosa sufferers who vary from rejecting treatment to embracing the disorder as a lifestyle choice. Anorexia is consistently linked to body dissatisfaction and this dissatisfaction can be related to internalization of the thin body ideal. One of the main disseminators of the thin female body ideal is the media. Higher frequency of appearance-based social comparisons to such ideals contribute to thin ideal internalization and body dissatisfaction. A common element in pro anorexia communities is thinspiration, or media which promotes weight loss and idolizes extremely thin female celebrities. This research investigated pro-anorexia pages on Facebook and Pinterest in relation to the body and clothing ideals portrayed. Most pictures were user generated, portraying thin women who appeared to be under 30 years old. Clothing objects varied but were largely body hugging or body part revealing. Findings indicate the unique body and clothing ideals within this community

Study of copper(II) oxide and copper(II) acetate on multiwalled carbon nanotubes by XPS

The authors present the XPS survey and detailed element spectra of a copper-carbon nanotube composite synthesized in their laboratories. They compare the copper spectrum to a reference spectrum of copper(II) acetate measured under the same conditions to ascertain the chemical composition of the copper in the composite

You and CO2: a Public Engagement Study to Engage Secondary School Students with the Issue of Climate Change

School students are growing up in a world with a rapidly changing climate, the effects of which will become increasingly apparent during their lifetimes. We designed and pilot tested “You and CO2”, a STEAM program designed to encourage students to reflect on their personal impact on the environment, while also appreciating their place within society to bring about positive societal change. Over three interlinked workshops, students analyzed the carbon footprints of some everyday activities, which they then explored in more detail through interacting with a bespoke piece of digital fiction, No World 4 Tomorrow. The program culminated with students producing their own digital fictions, allowing them the freedom to explore the themes from the previous workshops with a setting and focus of their choice. We reflect here on the experience of running the You and CO2 program and on the themes that emerged from the students’ original digital fictions

A Comparison of Decision Tree with Logistic Regression Model for Prediction of Worst Non-Financial Payment Status in Commercial Credit

Credit risk prediction is an important problem in the financial services domain. While machine learning techniques such as Support Vector Machines and Neural Networks have been used for improved predictive modeling, the outcomes of such models are not readily explainable and, therefore, difficult to apply within financial regulations. In contrast, Decision Trees are easy to explain, and provide an easy to interpret visualization of model decisions. The aim of this paper is to predict worst non-financial payment status among businesses, and evaluate decision tree model performance against traditional Logistic Regression model for this task. The dataset for analysis is provided by Equifax and includes over 300 potential predictors from more than 11 million unique businesses. After a data discovery phase, including imputation, cleaning, and transforming potential predictors, Decision Tree and Logistic Regression models were built on the same finalized analysis dataset. Evaluating the models based on ROC index, and Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic, Decision Tree performed as well as the Logistic Regression model

Posing, Candor, and the Realisms of Photographic Portraiture, 1839-1945

This study offers a history of the concept of realism in portrait photography through the examination of a set of categories that have colored photographic practices since the origins of the medium in 1839: the posed and the candid. The first section of this study deals with the practices of posing in early photography, with chapters on the daguerreotype, the carte de visite, and the amateur snapshot photograph. Considering technological advances in conjunction with prevailing cultural mores and aesthetic practices, this section traces the changing cultural meaning of the portrait photograph, the obsolescence of the pose, and the emergence of an "unposed" aesthetic in photography. The second section of this study examines three key photographers and their strategies of photographic representation, all of which involved candid photography: it looks at Erich Salomon's pioneering photojournalism, Humphrey Spender's politicized sociological photography, and Walker Evans' complex maneuvering of the documentary form. Here, the emphasis is on the ways in which the trope of the candid informed these three distinct spheres of photography in the early 20th century, and the ways in which the photographic aesthetic of candor cohered with--or contested--political and cultural developments of the interwar period in Germany, Britain, and the United States

The application of amine-based materials for carbon capture and utilisation: an overarching view

In the ongoing research campaign to reduce the global atmospheric CO2 concentration, technologies are being developed to enable the capture of CO2 from dilute sources and conversion into higher-value products. Amine and polyamine-based materials feature widely in the literature as solid CO2 sorbents and as catalyst modifiers for CO2 electrochemical reduction; however, advancing lab-scale research into a pilot or industrial-scale application is fraught with challenges, starting with the definition and identification of an effective adsorbent. This multidisciplinary review serves as an essential introduction to the role of amines in carbon capture and utilisation for scientists entering and advancing the field. The chemical and engineering principles of amine-based CO2 capture are considered to define the parameters required of an adsorbent, describe adsorption testing methods, and introduce the reader to a range of amine-based adsorbents and how they can be specialised to overcome specific issues. Finally, the application of electrocatalysts modified with nitrogen-containing compounds and polymers is reviewed in the context of CO2 utilisation